University of Hawai’i Manoa Professor To Be Featured On Nova

The work of Milton Diamond, professor in anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawai‘i John A. Burns School of Medicine, will be featured on the PBS program NOVA.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 30 at 8 p.m.

WHERE: In Hawai‘i, the program will air on KHET. Check local listings for further details.

PROGRAM: This episode of NOVA is entitled “Sex: Unknown.” In 1965, a botched circumcision started an infant boy on a nightmare of medical meddling with his sexual identity. Born Bruce Reimer, he was surgically castrated at age two and then raised as a girl, only later to insist that he be called David and restored as a male. NOVA tells the scientific side of his disturbing story, which has implications for what defines sexuality.

Background

Diamond is known for his research on the origins of sexual identity. In his studies on the experiences of intersex and sex-reassigned individuals, Diamond challenges aspects of the practice of surgically changing the gender of infant children whose genitalia are deformed or damaged.

His evaluation of much of the work in this area, along with UH philosophy professor Kenneth Kipnis, has earned the British Gender Identity Research and Education Society Prize for Research. Diamond’s overall studies in that area have also led to a Contributions to Sexual Science award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and a one-year term as president of the International Academy of Sex Research, which encompasses physicians, psychologists, sociologists and other scientists. He was also awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal, given by The German Society for Social-Scientific Sex Research to distinguished sex researchers and sex reformers.